SJ is away today to Singapore and so I change rooms in the morning before having breakfast with SJ before she leaves. She is heading to Kuala Lumpur around the same time as I will be and so we may meet again. After this I decide to get some boring jobs out of the way, some washing and some blogging. The weather here is a bit hit and miss, though you can always rely on it being hot, very hot.
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This hostel has a great layout, it is spread over 3 floors with little common areas on each floor, nicely furnished with comfortable sofas. Then there is a huge rooftop area, which I think is completely under utilised. There is plenty of space for me to hang my clothes to dry, and there are some buildings on the roof that look like they were bars, once upon a time. The best part however, is Howard, he is a really friendly guy and makes it his mission to introduce everyone to each other, so people are much more likely to chat and interact because Howard has done the initial introduction. It is a great idea and one that I think more hostels should adopt.
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The rain starts in the afternoon and I have to rush upstairs to try to save my clothes before they are soaked. Luckily I got them in before they got too wet. There is a group of students from Kuala Lumpur here who are interviewing backpackers for their university project and so I let them interview me. The questions that they ask are fairly basic and so I try to give as much detail as I can and then offer them some additional questions that they could ask. Their English is very good and we just get chatting for a bit in the afternoon before they go on the hunt for some more backpackers. I think to myself that I never got to travel away for 3 or 4 days to interview backpackers, lucky them, I am sure they will find it interesting. I grab a couple of movies in the afternoon and some munchies, I'm feeling quite lazy.
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I head out for dinner with the Malaysian students and a couple of English girls. We head across the river to a small selection of hawker stalls that have just appeared in the street come nightfall. I tell the students to pick something for me, anything at all, just something typical Malay. They did well and picked my some delicious noodle. After this we toy with the idea of heading to a bar, but end up just heading back to the hostel, where I notice a sink on the roadside. It is fully plumbed in, just right there at the side of the road. I ask the guys is this strange, and they say no. During the day there are little stalls open in this area, and the sink is there for you to wash your hands. WOW! Can you imagine that at home. It would last one day before some drunkard would think it was funny to kick it over. Strange, strange place.